Education in a Transnational Context: Representations of Haiti and Haitians in the Schools of the Dominican Bateyes = La educación en un contexto transnacional: representaciones de Haití y los haitianos en las escuelas de los bateyes dominicanos
Abstract:
At the beginning of the 20th Century, during the boom of sugar production in Latin America, the Dominican Republic built the “bateyes”, small towns with some coarse barracks used for the temporary housing of foreign workforce, coming mainly from Haiti. These settings gradually became permanent dwelling places, and nowadays are found across the Dominican Republic. However, in spite of their complex history and contemporary particularities, mainly related with the transnational dynamics the population maintains with Haiti, the bateyes have been relatively little studied and remain underrepresented in academic research. This study seeks to contribute to fill the abovementioned void, focusing on the context of formal education.
The goal of this study is analyzing the representations of Haiti and Haitians that circulate in some schools of the “bateyes”, with data gathered in public educational institutions that are mainly attended by students of Haitian origin. The focus of the study is particularly relevant since formal schooling is usually a tool of the State and its institutions to reproduce dominant and hegemonic ideologies (Gramsci, 1967; Gramsci, 1971), and such ideologies in the Dominican Republic are strongly based on anti-Haitians sentiments and a mainstream rejection of blackness (Eller, 2016; Gavigan, 1995; Hintzen, 2014; Simmons, 2010; Valdéz, 2015).
The thesis presents a critical analysis of the standards and textbooks used in the Social Studies program, focusing on how topics related to Haiti are approached, and which representations and values they embrace. Then, based on ethnographical data, it examines the discourses of ten teachers regarding Haiti and their own students of Haitian descent.
With the intention of presenting a general panorama at the representations of Haiti circulating in the school setting of the bateyes, this work first describes how the standards and textbooks of Social Studies largely cast Haiti as a historic enemy and as a burden to the Dominican Republic. Then, the second section explains how the teachers reproduce the dominant ideology of national identity of the Dominican Republic in their schooling practices, and how they express racist and anti-Haitian discourses, with active statements as well as with several silences and omissions in their discursive practices. The tensions, ruptures and incongruences of the teachers are central in this analysis, since according to them the students of Haitian origin do not conform categorically to the mainstream representations of Haitian identity.
All the reflections are drawn from a multidisciplinary six-week fieldwork season conducted in 2017 in the municipality of Consuelo, in southern Dominican Republic, (1) to gather the educational standards and textbooks used in Social Studies in the schools, and (2) to conduct interviews with teachers of some educational institutions that have a high attendance of children of Haitian descent. The interviews initially inquired about the teachers’ handling of the schooling materials; their gendered notions on the immigration of people of Haitian origin in the country; and finally, about their views on their own students of Haitian descent. The data was analyzed having as theoretical and methodological framework the premises of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) that aims to bring together elements of discourse analysis and social theory to understand, uncover and ultimately transform situations of social injustice (c.f. Van Dijk, 1993).
Citación recomendada (normas APA)
Natalia Gómez Muñoz, "Education in a Transnational Context: Representations of Haiti and Haitians in the Schools of the Dominican Bateyes = La educación en un contexto transnacional: representaciones de Haití y los haitianos en las escuelas de los bateyes dominicanos", República Dominicana:-, 2018. Consultado en línea en la Biblioteca Digital de Bogotá (https://www.bibliotecadigitaldebogota.gov.co/resources/3711507/), el día 2025-05-26.
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Education in a Transnational Context: Representations of Haiti and Haitians in the Schools of the Dominican Bateyes = La educación en un contexto transnacional: representaciones de Haití y los haitianos en las escuelas de los bateyes dominicanos
